Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Melissa Davlin: The legislature missed its target adjournment date with budgets dominating the debates.

So as we head into April, what's next?

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, Senator David Lent and Representative Dustin Manwaring give us an update on medical education arrangements in Idaho.

Then House Assistant Majority Leader Josh Tanner and Senate Assistant Minority Leader James Ruchti discuss budgeting and end of session negotiations.

But first, let's get you caught up on the week.

President Donald Trump has nominated Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Director Alex Adams to be the next assistant secretary for the Administration of Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Adams has served as the director of IDHW since June, and prior to that was the head of the Division of Financial Management.

Adam’s nomination must still pass the U.S. Senate.

On Friday, the Senate State Affairs Committee heard a bill to amend the Idaho Parental Rights Act, which passed in 2024.

After the original law left some health care providers concerned that juveniles couldn't receive rape kit examinations without parental permission.

The proposed changes would allow juveniles to consent to those exams, plus allow minors who are pregnant or have children of their own to consent to their own care among other tweaks.

The State Affairs Committee sent that bill to the Senate's amending order.

Producer Ruth Brown has more online.

You can find that link at IdahoReports.org On Wednesday, Governor Brad Little and legislative leadership held a signing ceremony for a property tax reduction bill.

The bill sends an additional $100 million into a property tax relief formula that lawmakers set up last year, with $50 million towards credits on homeowners property tax bills and $50 million toward school districts to pay down bonds and levies.

Mike Moyle: A lot of people don't know it, but the last two years we've provided over half a billion dollars in property tax relief.

This will add another $100 million to that.

That's a good thing for the state of Idaho.

I want to thank the governor and others that have helped also, because this year with this added $100 million will be over $400 million in tax relief this year alone.

To go with what we've done the last three years is we've cut property taxes every year, income taxes 2 of those 3 years, and continue the process of lowering the tax burden on our citizens.

This is great for Idaho, and hopefully we can continue this process of lowering taxes.

Davlin: We'll have more on this year's tax bills later in the show with representative Tanner and Senator Ruchti.

Earlier this session, we brought you a conversation with Idaho physicians who were concerned about a bill that would withdraw Idaho from the WWAMI Medical Education Consortium, which allows Idaho and other western states to send students to med school in Washington.

Lawmakers cited concerns over Washington using Idaho state funds for abortion related education, which would violate Idaho law, as well as a lack of space for Idaho's growing needs.

Since then, Washington has signed an attestation that no Idaho state funds go to anything related to abortion.

And lawmakers have introduced a new bill that would still allow Idaho to participate in WWAMI while also pursuing other medical education opportunities.

On Friday, I spoke to bill sponsor Senator David Lent and Representative Dustin Manwaring about that legislation, plus other education issues.

Melissa Davlin: Thank you both so much for joining us today.

What was the idea behind the WWAMI bill, in which we untangled ourselves from the WWAMI agreement and looked for new medical education opportunities?

Dustin Manwaring: If you go back a couple of years, we passed a resolution in the House asking to add capacity for new undergraduate medical education seats.

And that was a specific ask to WWAMI in the University of Washington.

And they have not fulfilled, had not fulfilled that request to add program capacity.

And then coming into this session, I reviewed a memorandum of understanding that had been signed by the University of Utah and the University of Idaho to add up to 40 seats that are not within WWAMI.

And so bringing those two things together, the primary driver is how do we add, more additional capacity in Idaho and really get to addressing our severe physician shortage?

So that was the primary driver of trying to bring this legislation this year.

Davlin: And where is it in the process right now?

Manwaring: That bill in the process has been amended in the Senate.

It's now on the House floor.

We're waiting for final passage with those amendments, and that what that will do is allow us to add 39 WWAMI seats over the next few years and try to build out that capacity.

Davlin: But that also preserves the seats that we do have with the WWAMI agreement in this new version.

Dave Lent: It does, of course, that was the amendment on the Senate side changed the shall to may and then leave that up to the group that's being formed by the state board to make that determination as they look closely at it.

Davlin: The original proposal would have unwound Idaho entirely from whammy and pursued a new agreement.

But there were several medical professionals in Idaho who expressed concern with that.

Still, why not wait until Idaho has that agreement set in stone with Utah or somewhere else to pursue this bill?

Lent: I think, Representing Manwaring in his discussion, he mentioned this earlier, but, a lot of that is already taken place.

Davlin: The MOU.

Lent: The MOU where we're moving down the road.

So, this is just a step that really enables us to take that definite step and moving forward, a lot of times in the legislature, we set policy that really starts with the ball rolling in a, you know, definitive way.

So I'm excited for that.

I think it's going to be a substantial change and a good thing for Idaho.

Davlin: You are the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, and there have been a lot of discussion, high profile discussions about education this year and in previous years.

Looking forward, what is on your radar?

Lent: We have some exciting things coming up.

In fact, next Wednesday morning will be the main meeting in the Lincoln Auditorium.

We're inviting all stakeholders specifically, though, focusing on legislators, to join us as we form a Idaho public Education coalition.

And, there are many who feel that we're at a point in time where there's a window of opportunity for us to really lead out, specifically as the legislature, because the Constitution says it's the duty of the legislature to establish and maintain.

So as we look at where we're at, we're looking at some things that are very unique in time.

One is the Covid situation that occurred.

And we know that culturally, it changed our perspective on education.

Recently this session, we had House Bill 93, another significant change in the way we approach education in our state.

Davlin: And that for to remind people, was the tax credit bill for private school, expenses for families.

Lent: Yeah.

So as you look at those things and, and line them up, we have an opportunity in our state to step forward and, and essentially what we're promoting is let's reimagine excellence in public education.

And the discussion that we hope to take throughout the state is something like, let's just clear the table, let's clear the table and start from zero.

And if we could recreate public education today with what we know, the technology we have with the expectation of today, students of today, parents of today, facilities, what could it look like?

And then in fact, you know, how do we go and get there?

How do we connect those dots?

So, we're hoping that as we, explain this and get some energy and people start to get this vision of, yes, let's do something with our public education.

Let's really... raise the level, as we've heard this discussion, and make a level playing field.

And, and at the end of the day, let's let Idaho be a leader in our nation and public education.

Davlin: And this is such an interesting time to be having this conversation, because we're not only coming off of the Covid years in education and, and House Bill 93, like you mentioned, but there's also a lot of, uncertainty or opportunity, however you want to frame it on the federal level with the potential dissolution of the Department of Education.

How much does that complicate the conversation when we're talking about what to do next, without knowing exactly what the federal government might be doing?

Lent: You know, I see this the old poem about, stepping stones or stumbling blocks.

I think we have an opportunity here especially is what we see at the federal level.

And as we learn from that experience and talking with the Superintendent Critchfield, you know... what can we take and leverage back to Idaho?

Maybe we do some things different at the State Department here as well.

As far as the way we fund education, I had the opportunity to go to Finland and spend ten days and really just look from, from pre-K all the way to their parliament and meet with their education committee.

And it really opened my mind as to this really can be done differently.

And the time has come for us to make a significant shift in our paradigm of public education.

Our parents deserve it, our students deserve it, and our taxpayers deserve that.

And we can do it.

Davlin: And Representative Manwaring, you're on the budget side as you serve on the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee.

Can you give us an idea of where JFAC is with the education budgets?

Manwaring: Yeah.

Well, you've seen there's been a little bit of a struggle on the House floor.

We've had a couple of those education budgets that have not passed, and so we've had to bring them back and figure out, you know, what trims to those budgets we can live with and get them back out to the floor.

We did that this morning.

We trimmed, a couple of those education budgets with, the office of the State Board and the essential services.

And there was a request to pilot a program for routing software for our school busses.

And so instead of a bigger pilot, we're narrowed it down, and we're gonna do a smaller pilot with less school busses, but hopefully we still get good data coming forward.

And we got that sent out this morning.

And we'll try again.

Davlin: So you don't serve on an education committee, but after hearing what Senator Lent just said about this reimagining of what Idaho education could look like, you're on, JFAC.

You're a parent.

What would you like to see out of that conversation?

Manwaring: Well, I think we can have even more innovation in public schools.

I think some of the attractiveness that I've seen in charter schools, for example, which are public, but we can do better.

In all, public education is creating cultures uniquely to individual schools.

And I think if we can continue to empower school by school to create those unique cultures, I think that's going to be attractive to parents going forward, and we can help build out public education for the next several decades in Idaho, and do it in a way that that's going to have a lot of support.

Davlin: Representative Manwaring, Senator Lent, thank you so much for joining us.

Manwaring and Lent: Thank you, thank you.

Davlin: The first meeting for Senator Lent's Idaho Public Education Coalition is Wednesday at 8 a.m. in the Lincoln Auditorium.

One of the changes, the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee made to the legislature's budgeting process last year, was to separate out agencies maintenance budgets, in other words, what the agency needs to continue operating at the same level as the previous fiscal year, from the enhancement budget, which includes things like replacements for equipment and new spending.

Previously, the committee put all of an agency spending into one bill.

The new process has both fans and detractors, and some of that frustration spilled over into a Thursday Senate debate.

Melissa Wintrow: It is less transparent, and I wish we would go back to how we used to do it, and I'm sorry to say it that way, but we used to consider every single agency as a whole.

The engine of the car we looked at it all together and how the parts work together.

Now it's all over the place and we can't track it.

Tammy Nichols: I want to be able to see what we're actually looking at, like we do in a lot of our other maintenance budget bills.

Carl Bjerke: When we had the battle over maintenance budgets and then line item budgets, we at that time last session kept replacement items in the maintenance budget.

So to be more transparent, you're looking at what this bill is offering today, replacement items that last year would have been hidden in the maintenance budget.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Davlin: The ongoing budget negotiations are part of what is drawing out the legislative session past its target adjournment dates.

On Friday, I spoke to House Assistant Majority Leader Josh Tanner and Senate Assistant Minority Leader James Ruchti about the Budget Committee's work, as well as end of session negotiations.

Melissa Davlin: Thank you both so much for joining us.

Representative Tanner, I want to start with you.

We are now two sessions into this new appropriations process where the maintenance budgets are set separately from the enhancement budgets.

I was wondering from your perspective how that's going?

Representative Josh Tanner: I think it's actually going exactly what we planned it, how we want it to go.

I think it's been very successful when it gets to the maintenance budgets.

The whole idea of the lights on aspect, but it's more just setting what was set previously.

That's there.

That's in a sense their maintenance budget at that point making the enhancement budget their new add on items.

Gives us a better chance to dig in, dig through those, spend a little bit more time within the enhancements of what they're actually asking for.

So we've actually seen great success within that new process.

Davlin: From somebody who is outside of that committee, but who sees the budgets on the Senate floor.

How's it going from your perspective?

Senator James Ruchti: Well, I bring a little different perspective, because I served in the legislature from 2006 to 10.

So I saw a process that I think was well done.

I received a lot of praise nationally.

Idaho was recognized as having a great appropriations process, and I think we've lost a lot of the things that were good about the process.

For example.

Jeff did not get into policy.

It left that those policy decisions to the germane committees.

And what we're seeing now is, JFAC act devolves in or it gets itself involved in, policy time and time again.

Instead of relying on the expertise of the germane committee.

So that's one problem.

I've also noticed in the last couple of years we haven't set revenue projections until late into the session.

And, as happened this year, we already had a significant, tax cut over $240 million before we even decided how much money we had to spend.

And that's just that's not the way we do our home budgets.

And it's not the way businesses do their budgets.

It shouldn't be the way the state of Idaho does its budgets.

Davlin: And since then, the legislature has passed even more in tax cuts.

Representative Tanner, I know that the tax reductions are something that your caucus has championed and that you're really proud of.

Is was this a cart before the horse situation, though, doing that before the revenue projection was set?

Tanner: Absolutely not.

Actually, if you went through, we went through and actually set a revenue number based on the Iraq Committee.

And, and that's really what was coming through JFAC.

Now, the setting of it, JFAC always has the chance to, to not listen to it or to listen to it.

One of the one of the ways that, big reasons in a sense of potentially delay is actually getting more, more data as it comes out.

Every month that comes out that we don't set, we get another group of numbers that we can actually look at from an economic perspective.

So, I don't think that that's not a it's not a big deal, not setting that we knew where relatively where those numbers were at.

We knew what room we actually had within, the current budget, to actually get out tax cuts.

And I think they're important to do.

I mean, government has seen it massive growth over the last several years.

And, I think it's smart to try to flatline it and make sure we get back the tax money back into the public.

From income tax.

I'd make sure we drive that down.

That will help draw businesses to Idaho.

Idaho really does struggle with drawing companies to this state and focusing on driving down that income taxes will really help with that.

Ruchti: Well, I think before you can set budgets, you have to know how much revenue you're going to have.

And these are projections.

So they're best guesses, but they're based on economists projections and what they think is going to happen.

And then you have a committee of legislators who say based on all this information, here's where we think the revenue projections are.

Now, when we used to do this, at the front end of the legislative process, in the budgeting process, there was frustration that somebody had chosen a number that was lower or higher than it should be.

But the point was everybody agreed this is the number we're going to budget against.

And there's power in that, and there's necessity in that.

It would not make sense for your home budget to say, hey, let's take a look at all the things we want to spend money on this year, including that expensive vacation.

And then let's decide whether we have enough money to do it.

It doesn't work that way, and it doesn't work that way in the state either.

Davlin: You know, we talked a lot about budget, not just this week, but in past weeks on this show.

But there are also a lot of policy considerations, too.

You're both the assistant leaders of your respective parties and in your respective floors.

From your perspectives.

How are those policy conversations going as we near the end of the session?

Ruchti: Well, I think most of what we, came in here ready to talk about has been covered.

There's a few issues, but I that are left to talk about, and I think most of those are budget related.

I think those will be kind of the going home budgets, maybe the transportation budget and a couple of others.

From my perspective, that's what I think we're seeing.

Davlin: What are you looking at from a policy angle?

Tanner: I think we actually, probably had one of the best legislative sessions throughout, that I paid attention to over the last 13 years.

I think this was an extremely successful one.

We were able to do a lot within tax relief, especially on the property tax relief.

We were able to, shift a $50 million over into the school aspect of that, $50 million into ongoing for homeowners relief besides the income tax, within the policy bills itself.

We've actually really addressed some really good policies, actually, I think, Senator Ruchti actually voted for my death penalty bill for child molesters.

Even though, again, that goes against the constitutionality of, Supreme Court's decision, I do think that decision process was wrong.

I think we do need to make sure we're protecting the kids out there.

So I think overall, some of the policy bills that, we've seen this year have been very strong, and a better direction for the state of Idaho.

Ruchti: Yeah.

I think we've taken some extraordinary, made some extraordinary changes to where we had with policy.

So, for example, we now have a voucher program.

And we've funded it with $50 million, of taxpayer money that's not accounted for, not accounted for.

It's the first time we've ever, made a policy decision like that.

Under the Idaho Constitution, we have an obligation to fund public education.

But we don't have an obligation to send money to private and religious schools, which is what we're going to do here.

The Ada County GOP chair has already, called on the legislature to increase the funding of that voucher program to $250 million.

That would be consistent with what's happened in other states when it comes to a voucher programs.

Budgets ballooned very quickly.

They start out at 30 million or 50 million, as they did in Arizona and Indiana and Wisconsin and Florida and, many other states, Louisiana or Mississippi.

And they balloon very quickly.

I anticipate that's what's going to happen here in our rural schools and our public schools generally will suffer.

Davlin: Is that a concern?

I know that Representative Horman, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee and was the sponsor of that bill, has said that it's her intent that this budget will not balloon, that she wants to keep it at 50 million, at least for now.

What would you like to see?

Tanner: To me, I think you'll continue to see potential growth in there or not.

Again, this is up to parents.

This is giving the parents the option and the choice on what they want to do from an educational standpoint for their kids.

It's not the first time we've actually dealt with religious schools or anything else.

I mean, we've done that with launch.

And so I think it is following in that, that same path.

But, as a parent of kids that have actually gone to private schools, I think, I've seen success on both ends of it.

My mom was a public school teacher.

And yet she left the public school here in Idaho because of the failures that that she was actually seeing at that time.

I think healthy competition is actually good for any, any industry, whether it's school, whether it's business.

You get complacent when you, when you don't have competition.

So by having that competition, by having those choices for the parents, we'll see how parents actually decide to go.

If parents really decide that this is that some of these other, private or other types of schools are a better fit for their kids, than maybe the public schools needs to change their model a little bit to, to, match what the parents actually want within the state.

Ruchti: Well, Melissa, I want to be clear.

I don't have a problem with parents saying their kids religious schools are private schools, if that's what they choose to do.

That's not what this is about.

This is about who pays for it.

And it's about whether we have accountability on the dollars that are spent there.

It's fiscally irresponsible to send $50 million to private schools and religious schools without knowing where that money spent.

We spent over an hour on the floor yesterday talking about various budgets.

Less than $1 million.

Fewer.

Fewer than $1 million total in that budget.

And there was question after question, detailed question about tires and, vehicles and all kinds of information wanting to know where every dollar went.

And yet, a month ago yesterday, we created a voucher program that sends 50 million of taxpayer money that has no accountability, related to it.

Davlin: Does this get back to your concern, though, about the intent, language and the budget committee steering the policy by putting in intent language, saying this is exactly what we want this money to go to?

Ruchti: Yeah, yeah.

Well, absolutely.

And it's and it's not the only example we get and fact interfering in policy time and time again.

And what you want to have happen in a committee system like we have in the legislature is you want the committees to gain expertise in their areas over time and to make the decisions about where policy goes.

The budget committee should really just be answering the question, do we have the money to fund the policies that you passed.?

Davlin: On a related.

note we've talked a lot about K through 12 public education, but higher education is also a consideration.

And this week you supported, reducing the University of Idaho and Boise State University budgets by $2 million each because of concerns about how they were spending their money.

Another policy discussion.

This comes at a time when BSU is looking for a new president.

They're going to be starting that search on the state board level soon.

Is there any concern that this move, reducing $2 million because of education and policy considerations, might affect the search for a new BSU president?

Tanner: I would think not.

Hopefully we get one that really does align with the values within Idaho itself.

We saw a lot of things that actually happened within Boise State.

I mean, if you have gone through and looked at their university, 100 university, 200 courses, you had, gender terminology aspects, you had, a lot of different things within those classes that really didn't meet the values of the state of Idaho.

And I thought, in my opinion, have no place in being any education whatsoever.

But I don't think this is a policy decision.

I mean, when we are when we're making decisions on financial aspects, this isn't I mean, we are in a sense, setting policy if you're giving $1 million to one program or not.

But, but within that, you're, you're really looking at this not as, a potential cut because we're looking at it as how are they doing fiscally?

How are they being financially responsible with the money that they actually have?

I think a lot of people don't realize that they get hundreds of millions of dollars, of federal money that is unchecked by the legislature.

And, some of that money is a pass through to other universities, some of it is, a pass through to other entities out there.

Again, should we have the control over those aspects as well or not?

Because when you start looking at how they are spending their money as a whole, they don't need our money.

If they're if they're out there, if they get in this money and they're spending it in the way they want, they do have the ability to go out there and raise money where other, other industries, other agencies do not have that luxury to be able to go out there to that private sector and actually be able to raise money, these universities do.

So if they if people are enjoying the policies that the is actually putting out, then great, they can they can actually donate.

But I don't think it's smart for us to tie a taxpayer money into that aspect.

U of I did this last year with the University of Phoenix, I mean, I don't know how many attorneys they actually hired, how many financial people they hired.

And, in the end, we realized they don't have the constitutionality just because you're land grant university in the Constitution doesn't give you the ability to actually go put potential risk of everybody else and the state at risk over going in, going into debt and bonding that on that aspect.

We saw that, actually, and they hired people to tell us we were wrong in that aspect.

We saw what happened in Arizona.

I sit on the bond banking committee with the treasurer.

I understand how the Moody's and different, rating industries look at that.

And that would end up on our on our bottom line, on our books as our liabilities.

And it could affect our actual ratings.

So again, they had the $15 milli Obviously they have the money to do things.

It's appropriate for us to, to, to reduce the general funds if they have the money to be able to do that.

Those type of actions.

Ruchti: You know, this this, demonstrates just another way that the majority party handles its job.

It's, business in the legislature differently than they did 15 years ago when I was in the legislature.

There's not a lot of trust of local control by this legislature.

We've seen that at the university level, where they dive into the universities and how they do their business, how they structure their organization, what they allow to be taught.

We have a DEI bill right now that, it's going to, create all kinds of problems for our higher ed institutions.

But it's not just higher ed, it's what your schools are allowed to teach your kids, what school boards are allowed to decide and not decide, even though they're elected.

It's what cities are allowed to do in their own communities to try to address the cost of housing and a variety of other challenges that they are on the front line of facing.

It's what books your kids are allowed to read that the library boards often appointed or elected or allowed to put on shelves.

These are all things that this legislature has decided are its business, and not the business of local elected officials.

Davlin: So much more to talk about, but we are going to have to leave it there.

Thank you both so much for joining us this week.

Ruchti and Tanner: Thank you.

Thank you.

After our conversation on Friday morning, the Senate voted down another budget.

One last note before we go.

This week, multiple Republican lawmakers lined up to shave their heads in support of Boise Democratic Representative Brooke Green, who started chemotherapy this week for her second breast cancer diagnosis.

This comes after Governor Little signed Representative Green's bill to expand insurance coverage for breast cancer screening for some high risk patients.

Everyone at Idaho Reports wishes Representative Green and her family all the best as she undergoes treatment.

We have so much more online at IdahoReports.org Thanks so much for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.